


What Doesn't Kill You

by gutsandglitter



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 08:19:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8364787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gutsandglitter/pseuds/gutsandglitter
Summary: “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours."Serena and Bernie show each other their respective scars.





	

Serena had planned on being mad at Bernie, she really had.

She had every right to be, after the way Bernie had spectacularly broken her heart. Serena had envisioned a thousand different conversations wherein she threw witty, stinging barbs and Bernie begged her forgiveness.

But that was all out the window the moment Serena caught that flash of familiar golden hair out of the corner of her eye. She’d scarcely made it a week before she caught Bernie’s sleeve in the stairwell.

What was supposed to come out as “You’re a miserable coward” instead came out as “I know what I want.” “You broke my heart,” turned into “Jason is staying with Alan tonight.”

Cut to the pair of them necking on Serena’s sofa like teenagers with an empty bottle of Shiraz on the table. The Kiev conversation could wait until morning.

Serena pulled her lips away from Bernie’s and began planting a soft trail of kisses down the right side of Bernie’s throat. Bernie let out a small moan, but as soon as Serena got close to her clavicle she became rigid and jumped back as if burned.

Serena was shocked. “What-”

Bernie looked away, clearing her throat and tugging the collar of her blouse up higher.

It took a moment for Serena to understand. 

“It’s just, um,” Bernie mumbled, cheeks flushing.

Her scar, the one from her spinal surgery. Serena had forgotten about it, she was so used to seeing it peek out of the corner of Bernie’s scrub top. She had never realized that the other woman was uncomfortable with it.

Down the hall Serena’s antique grandfather clock chimed ten. Bernie wrung her hands, pointedly not making eye contact with Serena. 

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” Serena said quietly. 

Bernie looked up at her through her fringe, brows furrowing for a moment before she realized what Serena was talking about. Serena had told her bits and pieces of what had happened during her mother’s illness, and Bernie had been able to fill in some of the gaps with hospital gossip. Still, she felt totally unprepared for the moment Serena turned away from her and shrugged off her blouse.

There had to be at least two dozen of them interspersed with the freckles that covered her lover’s back. None of them were particularly large, but they were prominent. The dim lighting caught the puckered skin and gave each mark a sickly sheen. The wounds clearly hadn’t been tended to when they were fresh; Serena probably hadn’t even washed them properly. 

Bernie wished she could have been there to wash them for her. If she had been there, she would have cleaned each and every cut for her. She would have rubbed salve on Serena’s back every night before they went to bed. She would have held her, kissed away her tears. She would have given her the tenderness and care that Serena had so obviously denied herself.

If only they had found each other sooner, she thought. Bernie might even have been able to intervene and save Serena the scars and hurt that her mother’s illness had caused. She could have taken on some of the burden that had weighed so heavily upon those pale, freckled shoulders. If nothing else, she would have made sure that Serena didn’t have to go through it alone. 

The worst of the scars fell just below the nape of Serena’s neck. It stretched across one of the buttons of her spine and resembled a sort of jagged crescent moon. Bernie traced this scar with the tip of her index finger and felt Serena shiver slightly at the touch. Slowly, she lowered her head and planted a soft kiss on the angry pink skin. 

Serena sucked in her breath in a way that was less than a gasp and more than a normal inhalation. She let the breath out slowly and then turned back towards Bernie, hiding her hurt just out of sight. 

“Right, well,” she said. Her eyes were misty but her expression was steady.

Bernie let out a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding. She wanted to say something, offer some words of comfort, but they wouldn’t come. She wanted to thank Serena for her the (frankly, terrifying) show of openness and vulnerability, and there really was only one way to do that.

With a trembling hand she reached up and pulled her collar away from her neck.

Serena pursed her lips and leaned forward, examining the newly exposed line.

To the untrained eye it might have looked like a wrinkle, a trick of the light. The surgical scar was perfect, seven inches long and about a quarter of an inch wide. Serena knew it stretched across the sternocleidomastoid muscle, just below the great auricular nerve. Serena knew this, but it was hard to reconcile the clinical with the actual. Yes it was just a simple mass of fibrous tissue, but it was so much more beautiful than that.

Serena reached out her hand, then looked up to meet Bernie’s eyes. Bernie nodded slightly, giving her permission. Serena ran the tips of her fingers along the dimpled skin and smiled softly.

“Guy Self is quite good at his job, isn’t he?” she remarked, twinkling eyes meeting Bernie’s once more.

Bernie coughed out a surprised laugh. “I’m going to tell him you said that.”

Serena chuckled. “God, he would love that. Smug git.” 

Bernie smiled and reached her hand up to neck, tangling her fingers with Serena’s and pressing a small kiss to the inside of her wrist. 

She then dropped her hands and began unbuttoning her blouse. Serena’s eyebrows shot up nearly to her hairline. She felt a violent pang of lust in her core, until she realized what Bernie was actually doing.

“Bernie, you don’t have to-”

“I want to.” Bernie’s voice was firm, her eyes were clear. She held Serena’s gaze as she finished unbuttoning her blouse and discarded it. 

Serena’s breath caught in her throat. This scar was much different from the one on her neck; where the other was clean and faint this was messy and raw. The flesh was bubbled and swollen, a thick rope of raspberry-coloured tissue that stretched the entire length of her sternum. It ran between her ample breasts and ducked beneath the front-clasp of her black lace bra, ending just above her toned stomach. 

Serena watched as it rose and fell with each of Bernie’s quickened breaths. She tried to grasp the fact that this scar had always been there, or at least had been there for as long as Serena had known Bernie. During their first meeting in the car park, it had been there. When Serena had called Bernie out for her dishonesty, it had been there.

When Bernie had first kissed her, it had been there.

It had been there the entire time, a reminder of how Bernie had been ripped apart and put back together. A reminder of how close Serena had come to never knowing her.

Once again Serena looked up to Bernie to seek permission, but Bernie was not looking at her. The army medic was staring straight ahead with her lower lip tucked between her teeth. Her brown eyes were filled with tears that refused to fall, instead choosing to stubbornly cling to those long, pale lashes.

Serena reached out and placed her hand flat in the center of Bernie’s chest. Her middle finger lay along the upper length of the scar, and beneath her pinkie and ring fingers she could just barely make out the other woman’s heartbeat. 

Bernie looked at her then, and the movement of her pupils caused the stubborn tears to finally fall down her flushed cheeks. 

Serena’s own eyes were pricking, and when she spoke her voice sounded low and damp.

“You are the bravest and most remarkable person I have ever met.”

“Serena,” Bernie breathed.

It was hard to tell who moved to embrace whom first. It was less of a conscious decision and more of the result of some primal force; the same force that pulls a meteor to earth and lets the heart pump blood through the body. They fell towards each other like Alice down the rabbit hole, and it became clear that they had been falling towards each other for some time (despite their best intentions).

They were two broken, battered, bruised people. They had their fair share of scars, both visible and invisible. They had hurt each other in the past and would continue to hurt each other in the future. But as they both knew, humans are remarkably resistant. Cuts scab over, broken bones mend. Scar tissue grows tougher than regular skin tissue in order to prevent reinjury. 

Together, they were going to heal.


End file.
